Weekly Review: Thirty7

Perfect whether you’re paying your own way or an FD is scrutinising your expenses.

Quick hit: Solid, ultra-convenient, comfortable, bistro-style spot fills a void in the Covent Garden lunch scene.

Details: Booking advised, but you can walk-in (for now). Covent Garden. ££.
Restaurant website. More on Instagram and from Hot Dinners. Find it on Google Maps.

The full picture: When I moved to London in 2008, Covent Garden was ground zero for awful places to eat. Angus Steakhouse. Bleak, chain pubs. The battle for domination was over, and the tourists had won. In so many places, it felt that chefs and front of house teams had just capitulated.

Happily, those days are over. Sure, there are still touristy spots in Covent Garden. But the range of options in the area covers everything from cheap and cheerful to extraordinary. (Try Adam Handling’s Frog if you haven’t already.)

There are great places for lunch. Margot and The Delauney are both outstanding. The 10 Cases and Parsons are favourites.

But solid lunch places can be hard to come by. Places that you can go and have a couple of courses, a bottle of fizzy water, and perhaps a Coke Zero or a small glass of wine and still get back to the office in time for a 2:15 p.m. meeting.

Thirty7 helps fill that void.

The vibe in Thirty7 was comfortable and chill.

Located on Bedford Street between the old market and Charing Cross station, Thirty7 is super convenient. It’s also pleasant and comfortable.

It’s from Matt Lovell and Rob Hampton who are behind the outstanding Oystermen just around the corner, and opened just a couple of weeks ago.

If the Oystermen is their homage to fresh seafood and super-fresh ingredients, Thirty7 is their take on the casual bistro. While the menu at the Oystermen is fish-focused, Thirty7 is a much more all-around affair. So there’s food and drink for everyone and every occasion.

On my visit, we started with some delightful little savoury beignets and then moved on to chicken liver parfait and “Old Bay seasoned crab cakes.” Now, please forgive me, but I need to pause here for a moment. I grew up near the Chesapeake Bay, where crab cakes are a litmus test for any aspiring chef and Old Bay isn’t a seasoning. It’s a religion. I know a thing or two about crab cakes, including how hard it is to make them from Cornish crab, whose meat is stringy and bitty and doesn’t come in big lumps the way Chesapeake Bay blue crabs do.

Well, these crab cakes were fantastic, Cornish crab and all. I’d return to Thirty7 just to eat them again.

Delicious ‘Old Bay Crab Cakes.’

Mains were roasted pork belly with apple sauce and hispi cabbage and a chicken supreme with Jerusalem artichoke. The pork was cooked perfectly with crackling that was both crispy and not so hard that it risks tooth damage. The chicken was moist, although the sauce a tiny bit on the insipid side, and both dishes were over-garnished with bitter, spicy, extra virgin olive oil. But I’m happy to write off those little faults to a new kitchen only two weeks from opening day.

Perfectly cooked pork belly (left) and lovely, moist chicken (right) slight let down by too much olive oil to garnish.

Dessert was a lovely cheesecake and a chocolate mousse. Again, both exactly as advertised: Sufficiently tasty that you wouldn’t mind a few extra minutes in the gym.

Matt and Rob plan to let the menu evolve with the changing seasons, and I can already spot some differences between the menu we saw and the launch menu that appears on the website. Like the Oystermen, they are committed to “celebrating the use of fresh ingredients.” So if you return over and over, you won’t get bored.

And there’s a lot more to Thirty7 than lunch. If you need an evening spot, they have built a cocktail bar in their basement that’s far too cool for me, but which boasts admirable looking cocktails. And there’s a tempting brunch menu, too.

The basement cocktail bar. There’s a good cocktail list and a DJ booth.

The wine list is drawn from the substantial stocks of Bedford Street Wines, Matt and Rob’s shop right up the street. It strikes a great balance between classic and trendy without trying to persuade you to choose one over the other.

All in all, Thirty7 is the kind of place that you could go happily go once a week and become a true regular. Excellent food. An evolving menu. Strong wine list. Cocktails when necessary. All at a price that’s affordable whether you’re paying your own way or an FD is scrutinising your expenses claim.

Thanks for reading Professional Lunch. Thirty7 is now part of my “Quick Reference Guide: London Restaurants for Business Eating & Drinking” and has been added to the Google Map with all of the recommended places. Please feel free to share this review or the Guide with colleagues and friends, and maybe use it as an excuse to book a lunch.